Girls.

I happen to think Lena Dunham's new series "Girls" is fucking awesome (and I don't use the f-bomb lightly in prose, people). The show centers around four friends living in New York--their pitfalls, laughs, disagreements, conversations, romantic calamities, and total clusterfucks (there's that word again). While critics have worried over PC concerns (where's the diversity in the cast? why is Hannah, the protagonist, so entitled? why are Millennials so obnoxious?), I've enjoyed every minute of the series. Finally: an authentic, witty, and garish representation of the post-collegiate bubble. Am I the only one who feels as if they know all of the "Ladies" on the screen? Sure, I'm blushing to high hell when Hannah gets it on with her eery sociopath of a lover but hey, I'd be lying if I told you I didn't know a few myself. The show is relatable and real, putting a positive spin on the malaise that characterizes the Millennial generation. Sure, we're educated and empowered, but we don't know what the f--- to do..or at least I don't. While I'm no critic myself, I am excited and proud of Miss Lena Dunham. Go on with your bad self because you really are "a voice of a generation," and we need you.

Hackers

I'd like to take a moment for Hackers, the 1995 weirdo classic featuring a shorn fem-bot called Angelina Jolie, a very blond Johnny Lee Miller, and a 14 yr old boy who smokes through braces. Let's not forget the Venezuelan guy with leopard pants and a trick for tricking pay phone operators, the hippie waif with braids and kitten sweaters (he's male btw), and of course, Marc Anthony. Yes, you read me right.

Why do I mention Hackers? what got me hooked? the rollerblading? the ninja-turtle style leather jackets? the fantastically 90's backdrops? Yes, all of it.

Hackers offers a deliciously ugly world of high school hijinks with a dose of total world domination. Think: sneaking cigarettes and computer equipment; running from parents, early curfew, and the FBI; and the occassional infiltration of the commercialized world from a stolen perch at the top of a sky rise.

This pod of ragamuffin dweebs want nothing more than to sit around reading thick computer manuals, drinking iced teas, listening to doped-up remixes. Call me crazy but I salute the Hacker life style. I think I'll braid my hair, buckle on some skates, and take over the world. I may even do the truly unthinkable and buy a metallic leather jacket..

The Cult of Beauty

"The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours we live." I saw that quote at a recent exhibit entitled The Cult of Beauty--an exploration of aesthetics during the Victorian Era. It might have been my mood on that Saturday (a triumphal blend of still nerves and electrical pulses, lemon tea and whistling pines) but that struck me as Pure Beauty, no questions, no further questions, contained, flawless.

Glorious Nonsense

A pal of mine (and a smart cookie) once used the phrase "return to glorious nonsense." He used it abstractly, perhaps before flinging his shirt off the rails in ecstasy, but the words stayed close. Lately, I can't help but think of that night on the balcony and of college--that messily constructed clapboard house filled to the gills with beer cans, books, basements, and debasements. College, the all consuming fire, the bullshit mess, the utter bliss of giving into our worst selves.

I know, I know: our futures are burning bright with success, discovery, piety. And college had to end. The luster of youthful splendor, idiocy, and Andre champagne had to come to a close and we're all growing up. And yet, I'd give my firstborn for one more night in a state of "glorious nonsense," for the peculiar paradise I called home.

I miss the shit out of college and I dare any of my college professors to challenge my grammar, the content of my prose.

Made in America

"Sweet baby Jesus, we made it in America." When it smells like piss on the 22 and my shoes won't keep me upright, I think of that. Am I making it? Everyday is a land mine, a discovery of Spanish streets and the realization that life is the time between Caltrains. Am I making it really? I think yes, if only by trying.

The 43

I rode the bus for two hours yesterday, the 28, the 43--jumping on at 19th and Taravale, off at Lombard and Filmore, on at Lombard and Divisadero, off at Masonic and Hayes in the hopes of a mirrored plateau for an upcoming nuptual.

I see everything on the bus, or everything I want anyway: the fog sweeping across the bay, little Chinese women with tasseled loafers and grocery carts, Parisian teenagers, surfers, Berkeley intellectuals, a sweet British couple, homeless men with shaggy hair who hound you for the empty water bottle at your feet.

The 43 is The Great Equalizer--a moment of agitated entropy when vegan and meat eater, rag doll and vagrant brush each other with every twist of the Presidio.

And even if you're afraid for your safety, for your belongings, for the preservation of your personal space, the 43 is throwing you into chaos, begging you to surrender as you roll up the hill. And sometimes, that's just what you need in the afternoon--a native surprise for two dollars flat.

Cloud Diary

"We wanted 24-hour room service. We wanted direct-dial telephones. We wanted to stay on the road forever."

I finished "The White Album" somewhere over America, dusty plains wrinkled like leather 200 feet below, with the curious feeling that Didion had intuited my need for her tale. This cloud diary about California, the mystical West, crab salad, and asparagus vinaigrette--wasn't this the life I would soon be living? Air crackling mysteriously in foreign locals, rotary telephones, dollar store rosaries hung from San Francisco windows?

I tore through my airplane cookies and airplane tea, savoring the American stills below our aircraft, drumming my fingers on the tray table, not sure of anything.

When we touched down in San Francisco, I closed my $2.89 volume and stowed it safely in my bag. "Good luck," the blonde next to me said. "I've never been to California."

I smiled, 24-hour room service waiting on my doorstep.

Step Ladder

Apologies!

I haven't written on my perfumed pig's sweet, earthy flesh because I've been on a roof. Yes, for a month I've been sitting on a roof, letting the San Francisco air whip right through me, so much so that I fell into protective netting and broke my hip and lay cradled there for more than a hot minute but less than an eternity.

Okay, this isn't exactly true.

But, for five minutes, sitting high among the spirals and California lights, I got the message and the code, the one augured for me by a woman with gold pendants and an office in the Catacombs. Because you see: the roof is the start of Joan Didion and slouching towards my own Bethlehem, engaging a new mysterious existence, eating fruit, swearing like a sailor, reading/knowing/writing all that has been unimaginable.

I was not on the roof for long but I know now that the roof is where it Begins.

Lacquered Love

"No, no, no, don't go away, oh you got my heart beat running away.."

While Nicki Minaj was shakin' her badonkadonk on the diamond mountain ranges of Mars (her native planet or so her catsuit would suggest), I was busy dancing to "Super Bass" in my mom's car. Yes, there I was, pounding the steering wheel and working it out like the yuppy cheesehead I am.

What can I say? I love Nicki Minaj. I love everything about her: the Barbie wigs, the thuggy voice, the two mile booty, the glitzy "schtickala" of Wonder Woman Gone Bad.

I'm a pop junkie and I can't get enough of Nicki or her superhero counterparts: Lady GaGa, Rihanna, and Robyn. These artists keep it real (to use the colloquial term) by tweaking the boundaries of the female form and pushing it to its sexiest limits, mp3 included. Their decadence--sartorial and psychological--is contagious, inspiring, a force of nature. GaGa's moods conduct the weather (I'm guessing Irene was an aftermath of her belch) and Rihanna's visage is glued onto the walls of shanty houses and trees in Africa--an icon of of the new revolution.

And let's not forget the music, the root of my obsession: fierce, transcendent, and reckless. The music-- a siren call of sex and lacquered love undercut by hot beats. I just can't get enough. I apologize if I sound like a lesbian/ amateur anthropologist/ or drug addict but the music, the women, the love! It's changed me. As Robyn says, "I keep dancing on my ownnnnnnnnn."

Now where is that leopard pill box hat?

Snip Snip

"It's good, it's noble, this whole business of trying to evolve your look. Here's what you do. You wash your hair, nothing too frantic, just work the suds until the grease is gone. Reminds me of washing the dishes sometimes. Okay, now blow dry the roots. Pull from the roots and lift upwards. Your hair is really curly so you've got to get the little fuckers at the roots otherwise you're toast. Use thickening balm, and don't be afraid of that word "thickening." Where was I? Okay, so the hair is damp but the roots are smooth. Take a break, maybe drink a cup of coffee or watch the morning news. Go back to the mirror and don't be afraid of your reflection. You look like shit but it's all uphill. You're a warrior, riding into the battle that is Hair Care. You're prepped and ready with a majestic victory in sight. Finish blow drying your hair. Then reach for your curlers and gently bend your hair around them. Did I mention my mom can do all of this in six minutes? Unbelievable, right? She hates my boyfriend because he rides a motorcycle and gives me leather jackets. He has a Napoleon complex but I kinda like it. He just tattooed my name on his breast. Okay, so take the curlers out and brush hair downward. You should be getting a sort of Botticelli wave. Believe me. You are going to look like the fucking mermaid emerging from the shell if you stick this. Okay! We're all done. How do you feel?"

I promptly threw up and then bought a curling brush. (FYI my hair looked damn good).

#Botticelli, blow drying, battle, feminine incompetence

Topography

Nothing compares/ no worries or cares/ regrets and mistakes/ they're memories made/ who knew how bittersweet this would taste

Adele, if you're reading this, you break my heart. And like a masochist I want it again and again. I want you to take my heart and smash it on the floor when you rush to the piano and feverishly get to playing, never caring that you're waking the neighbors and setting the roof on fire.

Let me explain.

I walk my elderly beagle, Patty, on the all-too-regular in Chicago's West Loop. We stroll through the alleys and freshly planted cabbage patches, through the urban wild flowers, and past the criminals smoking outside of Cook County's Parole office.

To ease the pain, I often listen to Adele and her heavenly piano rifts. When I do this, the urban decay transforms into a surreal opera in which the El tracks, hot breeze, and smell of fertilizer are all necessary and good--components of a life that refuses mediocrity instead of the non-life I fear is mine.

I'm not usually this dour, I promise, but I'm in the arduous process of putting my life together (college graduation!) and I need an inspiration and an idol. I need Adele's drama and heartbreak because otherwise I'm only partially employed, walking the dog, waiting for life to begin.

Adele's voice has its own topography, its own moons, stars, mountains, and I need to travel where it leads. I need the simultaneity of my life lifting and rising with her cadences, and the rocket trip to her universe. I need her adventure.

So thanks, Adele. Thanks for taking me with you. I really appreciate it. You couldn't know how much. And if you need an assistant, call me up. Seriously.

Summer Clothes

I'm an unabashed magazine reader and it usually results in tachycardia. My heart beats furiously, anxious to be united with the imagery: mermaids in their summer clothes, wine lips, garlands of peonies in infinite model manes, splendor and grass and striped umbrellas on the beaches of Marseilles. When I cycle through these portraits--immediate and gorgeous--I lust to enter the scene of the crime, to dip my toes into the emerald waters of the virtual beach. I'm perpetually inspired and energized, fizzy after drinking in the carbonated imagery of W, Elle, Bazaar, Vogue. I willingly suffer through the beauty that these magazines provide, just a hopeless supplicant at the altar of Fashion. I went quiet at the sight of this season's Lanvin rose-infused gown. Couldn't that be me in super-stellar dripping blooms with cascading hair and a face full of mystery? Couldn't it? My imagination runs like a race horse around a mud track. I want the photo, the glitz, the dress, the look, the locale, the dream, the mystique, the fantasy, the budget, the beauty, the life. Can I have it, the magical sartorial tutto? I don't know but I'll continue to bow my head in prayer, waiting for Lanvin to carry me to heaven or the golden wheat fields of Elle's location director.

Marrakesh

I'm a relentless optimist and it's a hip point of derision. All too often some drunk dude with cigarette dangling says "oh come on, how can you be so hopeful? How could you be so silly?" It seems I'm the only living girl characterized by a standard state of enchantment. Well sorry dude but I beg to differ from the cynical alley cat. Yes, we've all heard that the economy is parched, the job market blows, the world isn't kind, but are these the only breathing considerations? What about life's unchanging pleasantries?

To escape the alleged realities of my generation, I've turned to a book on gypset culture in which Yves Saint Laurent once said "[I see] a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to lift before an extraordinary future."

Finally, someone who sees the futuristic utopia in my head, a dreamer instead of a simple dude. Call me naive but I'd like to jump off the coast, cold water licking my arms, as the curtain rises off the beach.

The Gentle Giant

You can imagine my surprise when I watched RUN RICKY RUN about NFL behomoth Ricky Williams. Ricky Williams, for those of you athletically challenged, was a smokin' football player who had the celerity and dexterity to stake his claim in the NFL draft. Sadly Ricky's enviable talent was coupled with crushing anxiety; he sat through interviews in his football helmet and didn't lift his voice to the microphone.

Ricky battled his anxiety with pot. He smoked bluntsbowlsbongs and failed three drug tests before he was thrown out of the NFL. What was the world to do with this forlorn talent? Here was a player biologically engineered to dominate the game but uninspired to do so. Ricky took his leave to the chagrin and pleasure of broadcasters everywhere and experimented with planes of knowledge. He got into holistic medicine, yoga, and kush. He spent hours upon hours residing in his "dark places" where he felt most at home.

You, dear reader, may be pouring Irish whiskey into your morning coffee, wondering why a style bug like me gives a shit. After all, I prefer J. Crew to jersey and I never watch the Super Bowl. But Ricky was unearthly. While he was baked and demure, his eyes and mouth bespoke intellectual curiosity and unabashed opinions. Ricky was a dreamer, a mythical hybrid America hadn't encountered, "the heart of a yogi, the body of a football player."

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'd watch football every Sunday if boys like Ricky ran the game.

Pruning

To the untrained eye, let's say those of my surly grandfather (no offense, Mario), fashion has gone down the tubes. Were he to peer over my shoulder at Vogue, he'd scratch his wiry chest hair through his tomato-stained tee and say “Remy, what the hell!”

He'd shuffle off to tend to his garden, cursing the day he ever left the cliffs of Calabria for this universe of misshapen shoes and elongated symmetry. I say this with relish: I happen to adore the bulbous cork platforms, intergalactic heels, and fruity sheaths of our current spring. I believe in fashion as escapism, in women (and men) playing gypsy, rebellious cowboy, and nerdy chemist solely through their artifice. Ours is a culture of impervious elegance. It is brazen constructions that torpedo through show rooms and street style blogs and it's these that please me best.

Miuccia Prada, sartorial superstar of Prada and Miu Miu, in an interview with British Vogue, said her greatest contribution to the fashion world was her “ability to make ugly cool.” At current, Miuccia's passions revolve around the elemental: burlap, wool, cotton, retro sweaters, school girl with a twist of organic color and polyester blend. Mario is poking his head in from the rosemary patch, shears melting into his hands. “Whaddaya care about that, Remy?” he says before spitting into the grass. But I do care.

Prada has cut a slit into the atmosphere, releasing unruly monsters of material delight: four inch multi-layer cork platforms, faux dyed minks, boxy boat dresses stitched messily. What's thrilling is not the clothes themselves (though I'll happily accept a Miu Miu geisha dress) but the abstract and hedonistically glamorous universe that they inhabit. They are seperate from the everyday, burning like constellations in a dark sky.

Prada is not alone in her quest for The Ugly. Spring collections for Valentino favor studded stilettos while Maison Martin Margiela showcase snake skin booties appropriate for the likes of Indiana Jones or Mike Tyson. And let's not forget the Tibi onesie—a body suit/ mature diaper for the fashion savvy and irresolute bathroom goer.

If I may be so bold, it seems that my generation is informed by sleek nihilism, cynicism, and distaste for classical conceptions of beauty. What we are drawn to is the weird, the futuristic, the ethnic, the bizarre. Ours is a world of nuclear sponge baths, pot-smoking celebrities, and cinder block heels and we've come to like it. Call us weird, call us alien—we'll step, ever so lightly, shoes chaining us to the current.

Just look at popular website “The Man Repeller” with a cult following of 4,102 members. The site records the exploits of a fashion-enthusiast with a penchant for self-deprecation and dissuading dudes. The blogger styles looks inspired by all that is hideous and otherworldly, e.g. “the infant gets abducted by a black crow that was bred in a Parisian atelier.”

We just can't help ourselves.

Lego Queen

Iris Apfel is a G. That's right: I'm talking about the 90 year old globe-trotting-sherpa-wearing- turquoise-clad-parrot who both embodies and dismantles all that is style and fashion itself. Let me explain.

Iris Apfel was born in Queens in 1921, the granddaughter of a master Russian tailor, and daughter of Samuel and Sadye Barrel. Iris's father worked in the mirror and glass business while her mother owned a small boutique. Admittedly, Iris emerged from the womb to an artistic brood but her fashion sensibility seems God-given. As she recounts it, her first stylistic inspiration occurred at age eight. Sadye had arranged for a formal portrait and Iris was in charge of herself. She and her nanny constructed a gown out of cheese cloth, inspired by Isadora Duncan, thus setting the wheels of improvisation in motion.

As an adult, Iris studied art history at NYU and attended art school at the University of Wisconsin before taking up with Women's Wear Daily, interior designer Elinor Johnson, and illustrator Robert Goodman. Iris developed into her own designer during the Depression. She had a knack for chic ingenuity and maintained affordability even as her clients increased in wealth.

Iris met beau, Carl Apfel, on holiday. It wasn't love at first sight: he declared that she'd be beautiful if only she would have her nose fixed. She scoffed, kissed him, and they've been married happily for 63 years.

Together, the duo started a textile company called Old World Weavers. Due to the nature of her business, Iris and Carl traveled the world, collecting beads, bracelets, silks, and cloth embroidered with mysterious hieroglyphics. Iris and Carl amassed a fortune, with the credibility to restore fabrics at the White House and the luxury of an Upper East Side apartment. Iris remained humble, preferring street style to that of the catwalk. Her friend, designer Duro Olowu, said it best: "Iris is more 'street' than anyone I know...You think of the great dressers – Gloria Guinness or Bab Paley – and there's a certain sense of sadness and sacrifice to them. It's immaculate but cold. Iris dresses how we'd all dress if we had the eye. Fashion is like a big box of Lego to her."

Iris is a child in a toy store where clothes are concerned. She calls herself a “geriatric starlet,” favoring oversize glasses (“the bigger to see you!”), tangles of exotic bracelets, feathers, lace, leather, and otherworldly accessories. Apfel is a maximalist with the opulence of Cleopatra and the pocket of Oliver Twist. Sure, she occupies a gorgeous apartment filled with Velasquez paintings and leopard furniture but she's fiscally conservative. She claims she's never spent more than $15 on a pair of jeans and her signature is her rarefied thrift. She attended dinner at the White House in a monk's robe (the heat was off! she claimed) and gleefully interchanges gypsy capes for Balenciaga cropped pants.

It seems that Apfel's sartorial spontaneity originates in her insistence upon singularity: “if you can't be pretty, you have to learn to make yourself attractive. I found that all the pretty girls I went to high school with came to middle age as frumps, because they just got by with their pretty faces, so they never developed anything. They never learned how to be interesting. But if you are bereft of certain things, you have to make up for them in certain ways. Don't you think?"

With retrospectives at the Met, Peabody Essex Museum, and a recent book entitled Rare Bird of Fashion: Irreverent Iris Apfel, Miss Apfel is commanding Chanel showrooms and African street vendors alike. There's no better time to be yourself. A round of applause for this kooky beauty queen, the rarest bird of all and a sartorial spectacular.

Lady Talk

"what i probably changed deeply was making ugly cool." -miuccia prada

African Girl

There's an adventure inside of me an indoctrinated yearning for asiatic waters and bioluminescence and the taste of candy with eyes closed african chiffon and the patina of his forehead; piping peppermint tea, the charred embers of a mermaid's hair, the promise of smoke on a saturday eve

Documentary

"Oui, it's an animal," he says, "this river"
"oh, quel chapeaux-"
The long-haired beauty skips the plank
Breaking fruit with calabashes
It's splendiferous-
Canoeing down a 2D river

Frida Begins Smoking

On lonely Mondays, Frida smokes cigarettes.
She adds dusty blossoms to her hair of rose and fuchsia,
And dances in the twilight to forgotten guitars,
Her mouth busy with tequila and rumblings of portraiture,
The hours turn orange, plentiful, a crate of clementines.